Josh Rosen gives injury-depleted UCLA reason to believe
PASADENA, Calif. — We will never see this UCLA team the way it was supposed to be, which is to say in this year of crazy parity across college football that it doesn’t take a lot of mental gymnastics to have envisioned freshman Josh Rosen leading the Bruins — the healthy version — to a national title or something close to it.
But the Rosen One has been chosen for a different task, and it became all the more obvious in UCLA’s 40-24 victory Thursday night against No. 19 California. As Bruins starters continue to go down and the resolve of those who remain gets tested, more and more has been heaped onto their 18-year old freshman. It turns out that for all UCLA’s problems and concerns, Rosen still gives the Bruins an opportunity to believe this season could be special after all.
“We lose our starting runner and our starting right tackle and to come out and play like we did on offense I was really impressed,” coach Jim Mora said. “Like all great performers, they’re able to let go of what just happened and move to the next event. He's been able to do that throughout and we saw it in spring ball, in summer camp. He’s just a rare kid.”
On a night where Rosen threw for 399 yards, completed a school record 34 passes and outplayed a presumptive first-round draft pick in Cal’s Jared Goff, there was, of course, more bad news for UCLA.
Running back Paul Perkins, who led the Pac-12 in rushing yards last year, went down in the second quarter with a knee injury. Receiver Devin Fuller and linebacker Isaako Savaiinaea also were injured, and when asked about all three, Mora only offered a short and repetitive diagnosis: “They’re not good. They’re not good.”
This comes on the heels of losing three defensive starters including the great linebacker Myles Jack, who already has turned pro, their best defensive lineman in Eddie Vanderdoes and cornerback Fabian Moreau. Oh, and linebacker Deon Hollins didn’t play Thursday with a knee injury.
“I don’t think people really understand how hard it is to win a game, especially when you're facing some of the adversity we’ve faced,” Mora said.
Which makes it all the more impressive, in some ways, that UCLA is 5-2 and should very well be 8-2 by the time it goes to Utah in a month.
When the season began, the formula for a UCLA run at the title pairing its defensive experience and a running game built around Perkins with the talent of Rosen, who would undoubtedly play like a freshman at times.
But that plan is out the window, and this is now the Rosen show — for better or worse.
“He played his butt off tonight and made the right reads and the right throws,” cornerback Jaleel Wadood said. “Day by day he keeps maturing, and if he does make the wrong read or the wrong throw he just shakes it off and comes back and does his job which I respect so much.”
To Rosen’s credit, he does not seem prone to self-congratulation or hyperbole. He said Saturday’s win pleased him every bit as much as the BYU game in mid-September when he threw for just 106 yards had three interceptions.
But it was also a step forward following two pretty horrific losses for UCLA after a 4-0 start that made everybody forget how much the injuries were going to be their undoing.
“They were pressing me to step up and not be a freshman,” Rosen said. “Stanford and (Arizona State), they put a lot of pressure on me, and I didn’t come up as big as I would have liked to. I think we showed today we can handle anything that comes to us.”
And he’ll have to keep doing it because Rosen will determine whether UCLA can finish 9-3 or maybe even 10-2 and end up in the Pac 12 title game. At this point, there is no other option.
“He’s phenomenal,” receiver Thomas Duarte said. “He’s just a guy who gets better every week. He’s in the film room, he’s in meetings, he fixes his mistakes. He’s made it a point where every week he’s getting better and doing something different and taking control of the offense like we want him to.”
Rosen has all the throws, but he’s also going to be prone to mistakes. California didn’t make him pay for any of them on Thursday, but from here on out we are going to see the raw footage of an anointed superstar still trying to find his way in the glare of a team that needs him to be great.
UCLA is a shell of itself thanks to all these injuries. But that also means more and more responsibility for this season will go to Rosen. It might not be such a bad thing.
“He plays the next play,” Duarte said. “Whatever happened in the last play it doesn’t matter to him because he wants to win. He wants to play the next play and dominate and that’s what we love about him.”
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